Cholent

The Most Jewish Food on Earth

It sounds insane. Why would anyone deliberately leave a pot cooking for fifteen hours straight? But thats what Jewish people worldwide have done for more than 1,700 years.

In this richly-researched book, Jewish food scholar Joel Haber explains the reasons for this practice, digging into how one special foodthe Shabbat stew has changed as Jews have migrated. Despite unique ingredients and names (cholent, hamin, skhena, khalebibi, and more), these many stews prove to be versions of the same dish, rather than different ones. A popular one-pot meal traveled with Jews wherever they moved, morphing with what ingredients were available and popular. The book uses this singular stew with a thousand flavors to trace the routes of Jewish migrations throughout the Diaspora.

Exploring the changes to the dish, and to Jewish life in each place, Joel highlights how this dish embodies the Jewish story.